


i've been living in the red

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-18 00:58:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10605984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: You meet in a pub--some filthy Neverwinter dive. He buys you a drink and slides on up to your personal bubble. You're flush right now and you can buy your own drinks, but he's also just watched you cheat your way through three hands of cards, so whatever. You'll play.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ouroboros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouroboros/gifts).



> The Adventure Zone took me in its arms, rocked me gently, and handed me a chaotic femme with a skewed moral compass and Tragic Backstory. to sum up--i had no chance. I wrote this for ouroboros because we share a love of selfish fuckers and people who aren't that good at being people.

Since you were a kid, you’ve slid people into three unofficial categories: dangerous, superfluous, and useful. 

Pretty jaded for a fresh-faced 40-something, but you give yourself a fucking break. You grew up rough. The stuff of high drama, if they wrote high drama about frizzy-haired elves with quick fingers. Which nobody does. All the stories around the campfires are about gods and princes and gods romancing princes. Sometimes the other way around. 

Point is, you learn real quick who you can fence as a potential ally. 

So yeah, your name is Taako and you use people. You help yourself, they help themselves, _bam_ , everybody’s helped, let’s go to the bar. 

You _do_ meet him in a bar, some filthy Neverwinter dive. He buys you a drink and slides on up to your personal bubble. You’re flush right now, you can buy your own drinks, but he’s also just watched you cheat your way through three hands of cards, so whatever, you’ll play. 

“You’re kind of a scoundrel, aren’t you?” he says. 

You’re intrigued--you’ve gotten _feisty, obnoxious, too pretty for your own good_ , but no one has ever called you _that_ before. It makes you feel like an elf in one of the tales--smooth and dangerous, like you have a plan beyond fumbling from one prospect to the next. 

You pull the drink toward you across the bar--just a shot of cheap whisky--and play it through your fingers, rotating your wrist so the liquid trembles on the edge but never spills over. You drag your eyes from his scuffed boots to the top of his head in a lazy and obvious onceover. Younger than you, at least a quarter human, eyes hungry and eager to please. 

You take the shot and slam the glass on the table, already feeling the wheels inside you turning. “I’m not gonna confirm or deny on that front, compadre,” you say. “But I am hiring.” 

When you take it on the road, you’re using Sazed. You have him wash dishes and prep ingredients and drive the wagons, because you do not fuck around with horses. Honestly, _Sizzle It Up With Taako_ couldn’t exist without Sazed, though you’d never tell him that. Because he’s using you too, right? It’s all about reciprocation. He gets cooking lessons and hot meals and a free ride across the continent, as well as access to your spellbooks. You even read some passages aloud to him when the words get too difficult for his literary limitations. He uses you for the connections you make in every town, for the little slices of glory you’re serving up as your name gets bigger and bigger. 

And as for the slick, humid nights in the back of the wagon--you figure you’re just using each other there, too. Making good on all potential resources. Sazed isn’t particularly handsome, but he has a nice dick and he pulls your hair when you ask him to, and keeps all the marks below your neckline. Sometimes he wants to hold you afterward and sometimes you let him, depending on the weather and how your insomnia is treating you. You figure that’s just part of the sex for him--the snuggling. Some people are into being tied up or called names. Whatever. You’re down for it.

But you wonder sometimes if it was more than that for Sazed. If he was in love with you. Other times you’re sure he despised you, that he used the fucking as an opportunity to take out his rage on your willing body, hold you down and make you cry. 

On the night it happens you see the the numb shock of horror in his eyes when people start to die. You cut and run, and as soon as you reach a town big enough for a train station, he leaves you. Doesn’t want to fuck around with a mass murderer, you figure. Fine. 

You? You shake it off. You start taking shady jobs--the sort of jobs no one else wants. By then you’re a pretty proficient mage, and you’ve already done the worst thing a person can do and you’re still here, so what’s the point of fucking around? No need to worry about morality--your ticket’s already punched. No making up for what you did. You don’t come back from a fuck-up like that. 

Except? You do. You move up in the world. Literally. You fight alongside people and get this. They don’t leave when it’s over. 

And then one breezy evening around Midsummer, in a little town that you saved (because you saved the whole fucking world, right), you’re leaning against a market stall, haggling lazily over a necklace you want but sort of don’t care if you get, when you happen to glance up and meet the gaze of a man at the armorer’s stall across the way. Every part of your body locks up. 

It’s him. He’s older, he’s taller, his haircut is atrocious, but it’s him. 

You cut off that old part of your life so cleanly that it hasn’t actually occurred to you that you could run into Sazed. Which is stupid, in retrospect, because he isn’t dead, as far as you know. But suddenly it seems inevitable. This was always going to happen. 

Your fingers go tingly and you drop the necklace. “You know, on second thought this clashes with my...uh, everything.” You lurch backward into the solid wall of Magnus. His hand braces against your inevitable stumble; it’s been months since Wonderland stole your grace but you’re still clumsy as hell. Clumsier, uglier, and there’s Sazed and he’s _looking_ at you and you know you should tentacle him all the way to the void for what he did but right now all you feel is _fear_. 

“Hey.” Magnus’s voice rumbles behind you. “You’re fine. It’s fine.” 

“Don’t--.” You want to slap him away, because it’s _not_ fine, you’re not fine, and he doesn’t even know what’s going on--

“What’s the issue?” Merle is holding your elbow, because it’s the highest part of you he can reach. “You look like you need to shit.” 

You cast a tiny little mage hand to pull his beard. He yowls, and in the ensuing chaos you look back up to find Sazed is gone. The road is empty. You’re still not super chill about being touched, but if Magnus wasn’t holding you up you would be on the ground. It feels like you’ve had a hole kicked in you, opening you to the howl of the elements. For a few moments you let the storm in to have its way. 

Then you rally. You flip your hair behind your shoulders and ignore the chilly sweat sliding down your spine. “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. Shopping first, then binge drinking.” 

“Ugh,” Merle says. “Can’t we just skip to the drinking?” 

“C’mon.” You tug them around and breeze up the main street; you saw a Fantasy Nordstrom a few blocks back. You don’t have to look round to know they’re following--Merle grumbling, Magnus awkward but game for anything. All is as it should be. The past leaves bruises but they’re only skin deep. It’s fine. 

You’re fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway. I have a lot of Taako feelings. Happy birthday, K!


End file.
